Front-lift bins are large waste receptacles which are generally provided with hinged lids and designed to be emptied into garbage trucks. Such bins may also be referred to as “front loader containers” and “dumpsters” (the latter term being a typical reference in the United States).
A conventional front-lift bin, which can be seen in FIGS. 1A and 1B, generally comprises a large steel open-topped receptacle A, a lid B which is hingedly mounted to the top of the receptacle A at one side to be pivotally moveable between open and closed positions, and respective pockets or slots C on the lateral side walls D of the receptacle which, referring to FIG. 1C, are engageable by tines of a lifting apparatus E provided on a garbage truck F whereby the bin can be lifted off the ground and inverted such that its contents are tipped into a waste hopper on the truck.
It will be clear that the truck engages the bin from the front and lifts it through an obtuse angle, causing the lid to pivot open allowing the bin to be emptied of its contents. It is desirable that the hinged end of the lid be radially outermost in the arc which the bin follows during lifting, so that the lid will open gradually and will not swing open suddenly when the bin is tilted beyond a certain point, and will close when the bin is returned to a level orientation.
A difficulty commonly encountered with front-lift bins is that it is often necessary for people disposing rubbish into the bin to do so at an end of the bin opposite to that which the truck faces when engaging or deploying the bin, necessitating rotational reorientation of the bin, both after deployment by and before re-engagement with, the truck lifting apparatus.
This problem arises in particular in loading docks on commercial and industrial sites (like supermarkets), and creates time wastage and a risk of injury during manual repositioning of the bin, particularly when it is fully loaded.